THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 17, 1997 TAG: 9701180438
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 76 lines
Cornelia Holland wants to know who turned her wooden yard bunny into a world traveler.
And why.
Late last week, three young men came to Holland's Maple Hall home to return the ``well water'' bunny sign they said they'd taken two years ago.
They told her that her inanimate pet had accompanied them on visits to places all over the United States, Italy and Israel. To back up their claim, they gave her 55 pictures of the little rabbit posed in famous places - the Statue of Liberty, the Dead Sea, the Lincoln Memorial. Even the Dallas Cowboys' locker room.
Holland was dumbstruck. By the time she'd gathered her wits, the men were long gone. She'd gotten neither their names nor an explanation of why they'd picked her bunny, of all bunnies, to go along for the ride.
The 10-inch-tall rabbit is ``kind of beat up,'' Holland said. ``Looks like he's had a rough life.''
The original white paint has faded to cream, and the inner aspect of the bunny's ears are drab orange instead of perky pink.
The stake that once held the sign upright amid the shrubs in Holland's front yard is gone, and his posterior surface is badly checked. There's even a big chip of wood missing from the tip of one upright ear. But the bunny still holds a sprig of flowers in its right front paw, and its facial expression is inquisitive as ever, says Holland.
``He's aged,'' she said, running a hand over the once-smooth surface.
``But that little bunny really got around, didn't he?'' Holland said, leafing through the pictures.
Finding the little white rabbit in many of the scenes is like trying to hone in on Waldo in a ``Where's Waldo?'' puzzle. The well-traveled bunny can't be missed sitting on a railing overlooking the Shenandoah Valley, but you have to squint to find him taking a dip in the Dead Sea.
He's dwarfed by the Lincoln Memorial and disappears in the crowd boarding a New York City subway, but you can't miss him in the arms of Dallas Cowboy punter Mike Saxon.
A Galveston, Texas, police officer looks proud as punch posing for a picture with the rabbit.
The bunny looks downright plain against the ornate architecture of Venice, Italy, but he's bold as can be staring into the camera in front of the Statue of Liberty.
Rabbit is circled with pen in shots where he all but disappears into the background - standing in a pile of snow on a highway somewhere in the western United States, for example.
The only picture that might hold a clue to the identity of the men who energized the rabbit is one of a boat, with the hare perched on the prow; but the identification number on the craft's bow has been obliterated from the photo.
It's frustrating, said Holland, showing a photo of three men standing knee-deep in Dead Sea waters watching the cottontail take the plunge; the shot is from the chest down, so faces are missing.
The only reference to time is on the back of a photo taken in Israel, in May. There, the bunny is held by defense force troops.
His bravado is evident as he stands next to a mammoth in Washington's Smithsonian.
With her rabbit returned, Holland is looking for answers.
Holland speculates that the men who escorted her bunny here and there are in the Navy; all three sported short hair, she said.
She's sure someone will be able to offer a clue, because, after all, she says, ``You can't carry a bunny around with you all that time without someone noticing.'' ILLUSTRATION: Globe-trotting yard decoration comes home
Photo courtesy of Cornelia Holland
MOTOYA NAKAMURA
The Virginian-Pilot
After two years, Cornelia Holland holds her returned well-water
rabbit, which apparently went all over the world with three men. At
right, a photo taken by his captors shows the little wooden bunny at
the Statue of Liberty in New York.